


History

by Natterina



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Agrabah (Disney), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Destiny Islands (Kingdom Hearts), Eventual Romance, Follows Canon, Gen, I don't even know what I am conceiving here, M/M, Olympus Coliseum, Port Royal, San Fransokyo (Big Hero 6), Soul Bond, Twilight Town (Kingdom Hearts), Wonderland, and then takes a huge dump on it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-22
Updated: 2018-02-10
Packaged: 2019-01-21 13:59:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12459228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Natterina/pseuds/Natterina
Summary: In every world, they exist. In every timeline, they meet. Their story ends the same, until one day, it doesn't.San Fransokyo never sleeps, and Sora is plagued by memories of lives he cannot remember living.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: This chapter implies dubious sexual consent and lack of it entirely, though none of it appears as a scene. It also features a major character death, but I'm not putting that in the tag because technically it's not a character death as well (which will make sense once the chapter has been read).

**San Fransokyo**

* * *

 

His fingers tap on the counter.

Tap, tap, tap. Little finger to index finger. The bell atop the door jingles, sharp, as the coffee machine re-boils itself. Sora can smell the sweet jam from the Victoria sponge in the counter to his left. The lucky cat atop the counter brings its paw down, almost waving, as the customer in the corner scrapes his chair back and makes to leave. The man who enters the café at the same moment holds the door open, and Sora lifts himself from his bored posture and takes a look at his next customer.

He suppresses the gasp as the man walks over to the counter, one hand already in his pocket to retrieve his wallet. Something in Sora’s heart bursts free, a thick rope of light, gold and strong and _tugging_ in the direction of the silver-haired man who stands in front of him and looks up at the specials board without a second glance at him.

Sora’s never seen him before in his life.

“ _Riku_?”

Where it comes from, he doesn’t know, but the man flicks his gaze down to Sora and analyses for the briefest period, trying to figure out who the brunet is. Silver eyebrows, perfectly shaped, furrow down as he frowns.

“Do I know you?”

Sora straightens up properly, his palms sweating from a sudden nervousness. He doesn’t know him, this tall man before him, so how did he know his name?

“I- no, you don’t.”

Eyes narrow to match the brows, and the silveret lowers his wallet slightly as he looks at Sora with a confused expression behind his eyes. The _thing_ in Sora’s chest pulls, tugging so hard that Sora feels as though he is about to have a heart attack, and _surely_ the other man he knows and does not know can feel it too?

Someone else enters the café, breaking the tense silence between Sora and his customer as the cold San Fransokyo breeze filters into the room. It snaps Sora back to the present, releasing a bated breath as he plasters the brightest smile he can muster and sends it Riku’s way.

“Oh, my mistake! What can I get for you?”

The abrupt change in his demeanour and expression is enough to throw Riku off, and he opens his wallet as the bell to the door chimes again. The unwillingness to hold up a queue beats his desire to know who the hell Sora is, and his voice is curt when he responds.

“Hazelnut macchiato.” A pause. “Please.”

Sora refrains from cocking his head to the side: he was not expecting someone as intimidating as the man opposite him to go for something so _sweet_. But he complies, serves the drink to go without actually checking if that’s what Riku wants, and within minutes Riku leaves the café and disappears into the darkness of the metropolis, likely never to be seen again.

Sora’s smile for the next customer is a little watery, but he can’t pinpoint why. At least he had avoided a fuss, and saved himself from embarrassment.

Lucky Cat Café indeed.

* * *

That night, Sora boards the busy tram eagerly, desperate to get out of the rain. It still amazes him that, even past ten in the evening, the public services are still so _busy_. San Fransokyo never sleeps, and the neon lights of the city shine bright through the fogged up windows of the tram. It is damp and cold, but Sora finds a seat and collapses into it, trapping his scarf beneath his knees but not caring enough to move it.

Whatever that feeling in the café had been, it has all but disappeared now. The golden rope that twisted and tugged him in the direction of the strange silver-haired man has disappeared now, as though cut off at the source. The soft glow no longer fills his heart with warmth, and Sora sort of misses it as he pulls his coat tighter around his body. The only warmth is artificial, from the off-yellow glow of the lamps in the tram. Sora wracks his brain for a trace of that warmth again, tries to understand how in the world he had known that man’s name.

The tram goes down one of the roller-coaster hills at a high speed, and Sora feels like he is falling.

Unbidden, a memory surfaces.

* * *

**Agrabah**

* * *

 

Sora has not eaten for five days when he caves.

 _Madame_ , as she insists she be called, all but croons and crows when Sora pushes aside the heavy drapery that acts as a door and walks in, defeated but proud. Her title is hard on his tongue, a foreign word that stands out in Agrabah, but which clearly denotes the services her establishment offers.

Sora forces down the bile that rises as she hands him new clothing with a saccharine smile, triumphant. He will make her money, she says, and he knows it. Life on the streets has taught him _that_ well enough. Might as well get paid for it, he thinks bitterly, as she strips his tunic from him and sends him into a bathing room that stinks of oils and perfumes.

She sends her _best_ man in to help him, and Sora finds himself sinking lower into the bathtub in awe when the most beautiful man he has ever _seen_ struts in with a towel and a brush meant to scrub the top layer of his grimy skin off.

Sora has always stood out a little in Agrabah, with his thin freckled arms and his long, deep chocolate hair: it gave him too much of a feminine appearance, something which counted against him in comparison to the other boys his age. Whereas his fellow street rats could sometimes find work as labourers, many people had simply passed over Sora, thinking him weak or unreliable.

But _Madame’s_ best man? Sora’s jaw nearly drops, because _beauty_ doesn’t even cut it. Long silver hair is pushed back from a pale face with a patterned kerchief, and the man is tall but lean. He moves like a cat, lithe and graceful, but Sora doesn’t doubt he has claws.

Their eyes meet, and for a moment something like recognition is ignited in aqua eyes before it disappears. Sora feels something like regret well up inexplicably in his chest, but before he can think on it too much the other man throws the brush at Sora. It lands in the tub with a splash, painfully landing right on Sora’s crotch: he wonders if that was on purpose.

The towel is deposited on a chair, and before Sora can even pick his jaw up the silver haired man is gone, flitting from the room behind the drapes into the adjoining corridor.

And so begins the last two months of Sora’s life in Agrabah.

Sora’s alcohol consumption rises from zero to more than one bottle a day, more if the shifts are long. He starts off as a simple server for the front rooms, but it isn’t long before one of the bedrooms frees up and _Madame_ lifts the drapes for him with a sugary smile that hides the threat behind it. The one bottle turns into two, but it is never enough to _dull_ the edge, not really, and Sora bemoans the fact that he’s so on guard that he can’t get drunk.

He gets one day free of every ten, _generously_ as _Madame_ reminds him, and Sora spends it as deep in the city as he can. Agrabah has always been familiar to him, for as far back as he remembers. He has always known the darkest alleys and the oldest passageways, even ones that have been in disuse for hundreds of years. He has memories of running down alleyways with a boy he has never met before in his life, of twisted shadows chasing him and threatening to drown him. He knows the location of the lost Cave of Wonders, despite never having left the city boundaries. They are memories he does not understand, but he does not delve into them too deeply either: lost memories are useless to him here. He ignores them in the way he ignores how he recognises _Madame’s_ best, Riku, and the pulsing painful thread that urges him to seek out the silveret’s presence.

When he returns to the brothel the evening of the first day away from it, Sora nearly cries as he ducks under the drapes and is immediately hit with a wall of heat and oil and musk. It is empty in the front, a quiet day to be sure, and Sora can almost appreciate the bar area for what it is.

It is draped in elaborate red fabrics, patterned in nearly every possible style and hemmed with silk of nearly every colour. The candles stand inside rose-tinted lanterns, giving the room a soft and intimate glow. Riku stands behind the cedar-wood bar top, deep aqua eyes on Sora.

Sora swallows thickly, but guesses that he might as well approach him. As he gets closer to the bar, Riku diverts his gaze to below the counter. Before Sora can protest, the older man removes two wine glasses and fills them with a red wine, pushing one slowly towards Sora.

He can’t help it: he breaks down.

“I- I didn’t _want_ this. I didn’t choose this, this _hell-hole_.”

Riku tries to smile, but it comes out as more of a grimace.

“What is it they say? Hell is not a place, it’s a state of mind and body?”

“I thought I could handle it.”

Riku says nothing, merely leans against the bar top with unreadable eyes. Nothing he says can soothe Sora’s pain, and Sora merely appreciates the company as he tries to pull the scattered fragments of his breaking mind together.

They continue like that for the next few weeks. Riku rarely speaks to Sora, and the brunet feels as though there is a well-built wall around Riku’s entire _self_ , a cruel and dizzyingly high wall of brick and mortar that cannot be scaled. Nothing cracks his calm and cool exterior, and _nothing_ elicits any flicker of emotion in his clear eyes. Sora would find it despairing, if not for the fact that Riku alone is the only one who will sit and listen to Sora chattering and jabbering on when he feels like coming out of his shell.

And then one night it changes.

Sora is in his room, last client gone for the evening, when Riku stumbles through the drapery and leans hard against Sora’s bedpost. Sora sits up, frantic, wondering what is wrong with his not-quite-friend when Riku turns those aqua eyes on Sora and he sees they are full of _despair_.

“Riku, are you-“

“You don’t even recognise me, do you?”

Sora withdraws the hand that he had begun to reach for Riku with, confusion plain on his face.

“Should I?”

Riku scoffs. He is clearly drunk, but Sora questions if _Madame_ is aware of that fact.

“No. You never do. I’m always the only one.” Riku’s voice is bitter, and his gaze turns down towards the bottle of wine that dangles by the neck between two of his fingers. He takes a desperate gulp before throwing the bottle onto the floor, uncaring of the looming stain on the rug, and leans down to roughly take Sora’s face in his hands.

As his lips come into contact with Sora’s, that strange link between them blooms to life. Sora gasps at the intensity of it, and it gives Riku the opportunity to deepen the kiss as Sora’s hands reach up to grab at Riku’s bare chest.

It lasts no more than ten seconds, before Riku pulls back and looks at Sora’s face expectantly. His eyes are wide, his lips red and his cheeks flushed, but there is no recognition still, and Riku pushes him away harshly. Sora feels that golden bond disappear with all the force of a door slamming closed on it, and its loss makes him feel empty inside.

“Every time.” Riku shakes his head, and Sora is confused beyond any mortal belief to see what looks like _tears_ in Riku’s eyes. Sora has no time to comment on it before Riku flees the room, tearing the drape halfway on his way out. Sora remains there on the bed, _stunned_ , before something inside of him breaks and bursts into tears.

It’s a profound sense of loss and grief that Sora cannot place the source of, humiliation and sadness and _longing_ that he has never felt for Riku in the whole two months of his time at the brothel. It feels as though it is someone else’s grief that tears through him, and he longs for the warmth of that bond.

Even with Agrabah’s dusty heat, and the oppressive humid air of the brothel, Sora feels as though he’ll never be warm again.

The panic sets in, primal and raw and ferocious, and Sora finds himself packing a knapsack before he can even comprehend what he is doing.  He takes little, and certainly does not have the foresight to pack water or food before he flees the brothel in a whirl of brown and blue. Faintly, he feels as though he hears Riku shouting after him, but Sora is long outside the city gates before anyone could catch up to him. He does not even register the dusty air, or the yellow sky.

Mercifully, the sandstorm gets him long before thirst does.

* * *

  _He approaches the palm tree slowly, one yellow star-shaped fruit held carefully in his hands. The sky is a lush blue, not a cloud marring it, and the ocean is nearly breath-taking because of it. Everything seems as though it has a filter imposed over it: the sky is too blue, the sand too yellow, the trees too green. It is vivid but beautiful, and Sora clears his throat as he comes within earshot of the teenager sitting on the tree trunk._

_“I can hear you, y’know.” The voice is lazy, with a cocky edge to it, and Sora could roll his eyes. Fondly, of course. The teen turns his head, soft silver hair brushing against the nape of his neck as he looks over his shoulder at Sora. His grin is warm, slightly cheeky, and Sora holds his breath as he wonders when his friend got so beautiful. The whole scene is beautiful: Riku, half sprawled across the tree trunk, eyes bright with an infectious grin, as the ocean laps behind him and the sun shines off his hair._

_Sora tries to memorise every detail of the scene before him, determined to never_ ever _let it disappear from his memory._

* * *

  **San Fransokyo**

* * *

 Sora emerges from his reverie violently, surging forward with a loud gasp and slamming his hand onto the stop button next to the seat opposite. His breathing is hard, as though he has been trapped underwater for too long, but Sora can’t hear it over the medley of _what the fuck_ raging through his head.

The tram comes to a gentle stop, and Sora tears out the door into the freezing rain and gulps in air like a drowning man. It is frigid, seeping into his bones and his lungs, but it _grounds_ him. It distracts him from foreign memories of suffocating in a boiling desert, and the one nostalgic memory of a beach he does not recognise.

That’s it, he thinks. He’s fucking _lost_ it.

He’s clearly snapped. Why else would he be having really vivid daydreams that include a _customer_ from his café? Perhaps he needs to go to one of those Baymax machines in the corner of every health store: even a fucking _hug_ from a robotic balloon would make him feel less insane right now.

The rain has soaked through his coat and his scarf, but Sora allows the cold to seep into him. In the morning, he might regret not waiting until the tram had climbed the monstrously steep hill he now has to walk up, but for now he stands there on the street corner as people bustle around him.

When he finally makes it home, after nearly crawling up the hill on all-fours, his cat is sitting outside his door expectantly. Sora stumbles into his apartment, one hand reaching out for the light switch, and slams the door behind him.

* * *

 Somehow, Sora manages to sleep.

Somehow, he manages to get up the next morning, let the cat out, and head to the café before the clock hits five.

Somehow, he manages to force the strange day that was yesterday completely out of his mind, until it is a vague issue pressing on his consciousness but not overbearing. He hums, a light tune from a Disney Town ride (he’s never been to Disney Town, but he ignores that too), putting the muffins out just before seven and following them up with cupcakes and three types of bagels.

He refills the drinks, dozens of flavours of Taj juice, and distantly hears the bell ring as he pushes the first set of sandwiches into the fridge. Sora turns, a sweet and welcoming smile on his face, ready to face his first customer of the day.

And nearly faints at the sight of Riku.


	2. Chapter 2

Riku, to his credit, does not look as comfortable as he is trying to appear to be. His hands are in the pockets of his dark blue coat, but the pockets are tight and Sora can see his hands are fisted tightly within them.

His face is a blank slate, uninterested and too eager to look at the specials board, but even from behind the counter Sora can see that curiosity burns behind his eyes.

Sora tries his best to appear as calm as possible.

“Hey there, what can I get for you?”

There’s a pause as the ball lands in Riku’s court, and he takes a moment to think of what to say. Sora watches him, polite smile slowly disappearing.

“Listen, I think we got off to a bad start yesterday.”

Sora laughs, an act.

“Oh don’t worry about it, I think I got you confused with someone else.”

Riku starts, his head shaking as he looks at Sora. “No, my name _is_ Riku.”

Sora inwardly curses: he had hoped the name had been wrong. He pauses, his grin turning into an awkward baring of teeth.

“Oh, er. Maybe we went to college together?”

“I wasn’t educated in San Fransokyo.” There’s a hint of a smirk on Riku face as he watches Sora flounder, and Sora hates his perfect lips.

 _Oh my fucking god_ , Sora thinks. _Give me a break_.

Miraculously, Riku gives him better.

“Yeah, anyway, I’m not here because of that. Or, I am. Do you want to go for coffee sometime?” His smirk widens as he looks around the cafe pointedly. “Or maybe not coffee, if you’re sick of the stuff.”

Sora sucks in a breath. _Hell yeah_ , did a guy who is quite possibly the most beautiful man he’s ever seen just walk in and ask him on a date? _Don’t look eager, don’t look eager_.

“Uh, sure! I’m free tonight?” Sora mentally facepalms, all attempts to not look eager practically thrown out the fucking window.  Riku’s smirk widens even further, and Sora could throw a cupcake at it. It ignites something deep within him, a fighting urge that wants to wipe the smirk off his face and prove Sora’s worth.

Sora reminds himself that he’s only just met the guy, and his reaction to a smirk should not be this visceral.

“What time do you finish?” The smirk transforms into a charming smile, and Sora could groan as he feels his heartbeat speed up.

“I close at five.” Sora gives his sweetest, most carefree grin, and for a moment something between them sparks to life. It disappears as quickly as it comes, but Sora feels a warmth settle in his spine. Riku nods at him.

“I’ll come by then?”

Sora nods a little too enthusiastically, but he doesn’t care, because Riku’s cheeks are lightly flushed from asking Sora, and he could fist-pump the air if he thought it would be embarrassing.

* * *

Their date goes as well as it possibly can, considering Sora doesn’t close on time _as always_ , and they end up never leaving the café. Sora ends up making them both elaborately decorated iced coffees, which are all well and good for inside the coffee shop, but which he then regrets on the way home when he’s freezing.

Riku makes jokes that Sora genuinely laughs at, and he’s sarcastic and cocky in a way that doesn’t really rub Sora the wrong way. It makes him feel nostalgic for a reason he doesn’t comprehend, though he’s mostly thankful that they skip the awkward-phase of small talk. They talk as though they’ve known each other for years, and Riku’s presence makes Sora feel comfortable in a way he’s never really felt in San Fransokyo.

The most surprising revelation is Riku’s job. Sora asks, expecting something fitness or travel related, since Riku seems both well-travelled and _beyond_ physically fit, only for Riku to calmly drop that he teaches and researches cosmology at the San Fransokyo Institute of Science. Sora just about falls out of his seat, because _how intelligent_ is this man sat before him?

When they separate that evening, Riku’s number safely tucked into his wallet, Sora walks the streets with a spring in his step. The streets are cold but dry, and Sora can see his breath in front of his face as he walks, his scarf wrapped tight around his neck.

He walks home, avoiding the tram for _obvious_ fear-induced reasons, and finds he doesn’t mind the steep hills as a small smile tugs at his lips.

Nothing takes the smile off his face, not even when the cat claws at his legs as he lets her into the apartment. It’s only when he’s lying in bed that his smile dissipates, and it’s nothing to do with Riku, not really.

The feeling that overcomes him is unsettling. His mind floods, the sensation not unlike someone knocking over a glass of water, and the cold quickly spills across the surface of his mind.

* * *

**Port Royal**

* * *

 

Sora comes to, slowly at first, and then all at once.

All around him, he can hear a cacophony of noise, deep voices and girlish giggles and drunken hiccups, horses being whipped and shoddy carts being pulled. He can detect a sour smell hovering on the edge of his senses, even with his face pressed into the rough, dirty sand of the beach. The ocean laps gently at the shore, not too far behind him, and he can smell sea brine and seaweed.

He knows exactly where he is before he has even opened his eyes, and Sora takes a moment to thank whatever gods are out there that he had the sense to shuck off his naval coat before he grabbed onto the driftwood that had once been part of his ship.

 _Tortuga_.

Fucking _Tortuga_.

He opens his eyes, wary of any audience, and finds he has attracted one. There’s a man, with his pig and at least three dirty pirates, standing around him, bottles hanging from fingers by the neck, ready to be flung.

Sora swallows thickly, terrified. He knows his clothing is too fine for him to be identified as a pirate, and although he is no longer wearing his naval blues, he’s clearly not dressed like a common sailor either.

He’s a _surgeon_ ’s mate, there’s no way he can defend himself if this turns ugly, and Sora knows this as he slowly lifts himself up to his knees. He prepares himself for a beating, even a sword being run through him, when a fucking _miracle_ happens.

A tall, well-built man pushes through the three pirates, rough but commanding, and two of the rum bottles fall to the sand in front of him. Sora stares, uncertain of what to do, before the most beautiful pair of eyes lock with his own and he finds his mouth falling open.

There’s no way in _hell_ that this man, tall and muscular and well-kept, is a pirate. He is clean and has an authoritative air to him, and he looks more like he belongs in those fancy mansions in England than he does on Tortuga.

But there’s something else to him, a hardness in the lines of his body and a rough readiness in the way his hair is pulled back, and though his eyes are bright his face is harsh. He looks at Sora with disapproval.

“Boy!” The word is harsh, _wrong_ in a way that Sora cannot place, as though there is something innate inside of him that suggests this man can only speak to him in soft tones and hushed whispers. “I’ve searched this whole fucking island for you. That rum had better have been worth it, I’ll have Tanner leather your arse.”

Sora finds himself being roughly pulled to his feet by his shoulder, and strong fingers dig into his bicep as they pull him. Sora gets the message all too well, and he forces himself to put on a swaying walk even as his heart beats wildly in his chest. He is terrified, uncertain of what the _fuck_ is going on, but he’ll follow this well-kept pirate for as long as he stands between him and the other filth on this island.

Miraculously, all the attention disappears off Sora, and he is led away with no issues. He is utterly stunned, to the point where he does not notice he is being dragged further from the centre of the port, towards a busy dock. Numerous barrels and crates are tied up, ready to be rowed over to what Sora thinks is the most imposing pirate ship he has ever seen in his _life_.

As he is dragged onto the decking, the musty, alcoholic smell of Tortuga dissipates. Sora is struck with a scent that has always made him feel nostalgic: sea salt and windy air, tangy in the way that it only seems to be in the Caribbean. It is neither cold nor warm, but nevertheless it feels like a blanket around his shoulders.

“Grab a crate and take it to Bikke at the end.”

The pirate lets go of Sora’s arm and pushes him towards the crates, but Sora whips around to stare at him incredulously.

“ _Excuse me?_ I’m, I’m not going to help _criminals_.” Sora is feeling very much the prim and proper Englishman as he stands there amongst what is possibly the most dangerous group of criminals he has ever come across in his life. Cheek will get him nowhere, he knows, but his conscience cannot allow him to aid _criminals_.

“Pick up a crate.”

Sora nearly stamps his foot.

“No! I’ve been stranded at sea, only to wake up on this hellhole of an island, and before I can even get my bearings you’ve kidnapped me and are dragging me to your ship!” Sora is rarely prone to fits of anger, but when he starts, it is hard to stop.

The silver-haired man bends his knees to pick up a crate, and Sora tries to ignore the appealing sight of his toned arms lifting the goods like they weigh nothing. When he resumes his upright posture, he raises a too-delicate eyebrow at him.

“You _really_ think I’ve kidnapped you?”

Sora blinks.

“You’re forcing me onto your ship, aren’t you?”

“Kid, I ain’t forcing you to do _shit_. I was _going_ to put you on my crew to get you off this island, but if you’d rather stay, _by all means_.” He sweeps his arm in the direction of Tortuga, and Sora wrinkles his nose in disgust.

“I’m not becoming a part of your crew.”

The man laughs. It’s a nice sound, deep and sincere.

“You can stay on Tortuga, then.”

“What? _No_.”

“Then pick up a fucking crate.”

The man gives him a smirk, cocksure and smarmy, and turns to take the crate to the end of the dock. It is loaded into a small boat, and Sora watches for nearly thirty seconds, his mind in disarray.

It is the hardest decision of his _life_. Stay on Tortuga, where if anyone realises he is from the King’s Navy, he’ll be dead by the next morning. He could stay on Tortuga, where the air stinks of pig shit and alcohol and _dirtiness_ , that deep grimy smell that sometimes even permeated officers on his own ships after too long at sea. Stay here, and likely die.

 _Or_ , go with the attractive _pirate_ , and still likely die. Go with the well-kept silveret and know that he will never again be able to sail on a Navy ship, not with his conscience aware of any time spent on a pirate ship. Go with this strange man, and risk being branded a traitor and handed a death sentence, a short drop and a sudden stop.

Go with the strange man, and be allowed on the ocean again, that home away from home, where the sea brine and salty air burns the inside of his nostrils, where the world swaying beneath his feet on a painted ocean is more stable than a life on land could ever be.

A whiff of Tortuga’s scent infiltrates his nostrils, and Sora holds back the vomit rising in his throat.

Wearily, and clearly put out, he picks up a crate and ignores the widening smirk on the pirate’s face.

A pirate’s life it is, then.

* * *

Sora’s not sure what he expects when he arrives on the ship, but to be tucked away at a quiet bit of the deck and mostly left alone is, truth be told, the opposite of what he was expecting. There have been plenty of glances cast his way, curious and irritated and confused in equal measures, but otherwise the crew have left him alone since the ship raised its anchor.

He won’t lie to himself, however. The moment he had approached the ship, a brigantine with elaborate designs reminiscent of Spanish battleships, his heart had sank. What was once elaborate and well-carved golden beams and decoration had been painted black, giving it a glossy shine that twisted the carved faces from elegant to downright ghastly. The red that was so distinctive of the Spanish ships had remained, stark against the black, so that the effect was unsettling. To see something so dark and haunting sitting there on an ocean so bright it looked painted, with the backdrop of a cloudless sky and bright sunshine, was more than unnerving.

And then he saw the name: _Excalibur_.

Out of the frying pan and into the _fucking flames_ , it seems.

Sora has heard of this particular pirate ship before. It is not _quite_ on the same level of infamy as the _Black Pearl_ was, before his time but well known in the stories his mother would tell him at night. It is close enough, however, that most merchant vessels don’t even bother to try and flee.

Sora had been outright convinced he would be skewered once on deck, but the ship had left Tortuga without incident, and now he stands on the deck uncertain of what to do and too fearful to draw attention to himself when he is so outnumbered.

The pirates are talking amongst themselves, mundane stuff really, though once or twice Sora hears a reference to himself. He is contemplating throwing himself overboard and attempting to swim to an island he can see in the distance, when the captain hands over the ship to the master and leans over the railing of the quarterdeck.

“Oi, kid! Get over here.”

Sora grumbles under his breath at being called _kid_ , but obliges. He had been surprised to learn that the man who picked him off the beach is the captain of the _Excalibur_ , but the moment they stepped on deck that cocky countenance had become stern and authoritative, and Sora understood how someone so _clean_ looking could command so much respect.

The captain meets him at the bottom of the steps, and with a wave of his arm Sora is directed to follow him to the captain’s cabin.

Inside is not what Sora expects. He’d half expected it to be numerous skull flags, but if he’s honest the interior is quite _nice_. It is small, but the furniture is all dark mahogany, from the bed frame to the decently-sized desk in front of the window. It is not well lit: the room is bathed in candlelight from several lanterns, and a heavy red drape is hung over the window. The soft furnishings are the same deep red as the drape and the exterior of the ship, and the whole effect is both intimidating and _intimate_.

Sora sits in the chair at the captain’s direction, and watches the silver-haired man walk around the desk to sit in the seat opposite.

All notions of refinement go out of the window, however, when the captain lifts his feet and rests them on the table, dirty boots and all.

He levels Sora with a pointed look, his bright eyes almost _hopeful_ , as he laces his fingers over his stomach. There’s a tension to his body that Sora cannot place, even as that infuriating smirk twists his lips.

“Do you know who I am?”

Something stirs within Sora, a guilty ache he doesn’t recognise, a notion that there is something familiar in the cocksure attitude of this pirate. Something within him tells him that his smirk is so infuriating because it has been levelled at him hundreds of times before. He ignores it.

“Of course I do. You’re the Dread Pirate.”

That smirk _falters_ , just for a moment, twisting into a frown before the smirk returns. The spark in his eyes dims just a little, and Sora gets the sense that his answer is not the one this pirate wants.

“ _Riku_. I have a name, you know. I wasn’t born _Dread Pirate_.”

Sora scoffs.

“I can see why you don’t go by that name. Dread Pirate Riku doesn’t strike as much fear into my soul.”

Riku’s reaction must be wholly in Sora’s imagination, because he almost looks _hurt._

“My first mate suggested _Roberts_ , but I felt that name belonged to a persona more mysterious than I.”

Sora doesn’t have much to say to that, so he keeps quiet, and Riku continues. “Enough about me, kid. Mind telling me how _you_ ended up on Tortuga?”

“My ship was attacked by pirates. I was in sickbay, so I didn’t see the ship. When it sank, I found a bit of driftwood and fell unconscious. Woke up on the beach.”

“Which ship were you on?” Riku seems curious, too curious, and Sora frowns.

“That’s not relevant.” He’s not going to let the pirates know which one of the British Navy ships has been wrecked. He might as well hand over patrol routes whilst he’s at it.

“Are you a surgeon?”

“Surgeon’s _mate_.”

Riku sits up, a gleam in his eye. “Excellent. We need a surgeon.”

“What? Did you even listen to me? Surgeon’s _mate_. I clean wounds and redress them.”

“But you’ve _seen_ the surgeon do his work?”

Sora splutters. “Well, _yes_ , but that doesn’t mean _I_ can do them, I’ve no experience-“

“More experience than this sorry lot.” Riku says, taking a swig from the rum bottle. “And besides, we ain’t fancy like your navy, kid. Ship’s desperate for a surgeon, and you’re the closest we’re ever gonna get. _Tanner_ has been doing the job for a while now, but sometimes he gets confused if he’s fixing someone or trying to turn something into a hide.”

Sora grimaces.

“I don’t have much of a choice in this, do I?”

Riku grins, seeming almost delighted in Sora’s discomfort.

“Not at all. Congratulations on your promotion to Surgeon, Sora.”

Riku motions for him to leave, and Sora does so promptly. He is so stunned at the sudden turn of conversation, the quick change in Riku’s mood, that he doesn’t realise that he has not once given Riku his name.

* * *

“Why did you name your ship Excalibur?”

The world is quiet. Chatter on deck is at the lowest it’s been since Sora got on the ship, or perhaps he is so used to it now that it has faded completely to background noise. It’s windy, but not windy enough that it roars in his ears, and Sora leans back against the side of the ship and looks at the empty ocean on the other side of the deck.

Riku is next to him, facing the opposite direction and bent low, resting his arms along the wooden bulkhead. His hair is pulled back and secured with a red kerchief: it makes Sora think of all those stories of Jack Sparrow, and how he always imagined the man would wear a similar kerchief. He never imagined Sparrow to be as beautiful as Riku is, however.

In the month that he has been on the ship, Sora has begun to feel stranger with every passing day. At first it had felt like something had been knocked loose in his heart, a little glow worm pushing in and settling down. But he _knows_ it is not only him: every conversation he has with the strange captain of the _Excalibur_ opens something up inside him, and it feels rather like an odd, golden thread is linking him to Riku. It pulses and changes, bizarrely, on _Riku’s_ mood. If the silveret is feeling open, it flares and twists and turns, and if he is in a strange and distant mood, it retreats like a guillotine slamming down on it.

A small, fond smile twists at Riku’s lips when Sora asks his question, and Riku’s eyes move from the sea to Sora, then back to the sea.

“I didn’t name it.”

“What? Then who did?” Sora feels a frown coming onto his face, but Riku continues.

“When I was young, a kid really, my best friend and I swore we’d get off our island and sail the seas. We made a raft, and had a competition. If I won the race, the ship would be named _Highwind_. If he won, it would be named _Excalibur_.”

Riku’s smile is wistful, but his eyes never leave the ocean. Sora folds his arms and looks down at him, and his heart aches.

“What happened to your friend?”

Riku turns so that he is facing Sora, leaning on only one arm, and the smile turns slightly bitter.

“I lost him to time.”

* * *

Port Royal is an oddity amongst worlds, Riku knows, and it is a place he cannot quite wrap his head around. It exists in a loop, a constant era that never changes, the Golden Age of Piracy going around and around in circles. It is a world with a thousand years of history across less than a century of real time. The people come and go, but the world exists in the same, constant state.

And somehow, _again_ , Riku exists with Sora in the same unlikely pattern of events. He alone controls the bond that connects them, the golden thread he can envision that holds tightly to their souls. He alone controls it, because he alone remembers it.  It is a bond of gold and twisted desperation that flares brightly between them no matter the distance, that tugs and pulls in the other’s direction and begs for reunion, a map navigation point Riku only has to follow every time he comes into a new existence.

Every time he comes across Sora, he tries to ignite the other’s memory, but it never, _ever_ works. With this Sora, he had hoped that the strange way that Port Royal runs would help him, but it seems it is not to be. Some days he lets the bond flow freely, and others he hides it behind the wall around his heart. He is tired of hoping, tired of waiting, tired of _loving_ a Sora that is becoming a long distant memory. With each life Riku dims, cockiness turning to bitterness. He’s not sure he can summon the strength to keep _bothering_.

Port Royal ends the same way every life ends, with Riku’s nightmares coming to life. Another pirate ship takes them by surprise, and though it is a battle Riku’s men can and _will_ easily win, his men are trained with sword and canon.

Riku has so many images in his mind of Sora dying that he no longer knows which ones are real and which ones belong firmly in his nightmares. What he _does_ know, however, is that it a cruel and unusual sight when the inevitable arrives. The sky is bright and blue, and Riku, standing on the quarterdeck, registers the look of surprise on Sora’s face when a cannonball smashes through the bulkhead. Their eyes meet, briefly, before the actual impact, and there is no time to _move_.

Sora is there on the foredeck one moment, and consumed by splintered wood and the cannonball the next.

* * *

  _The sun sets behind them. It is a fierce, unusual sunset, lacking the usual soft tones of a Destiny Islands' sunset. Instead it is a mix of deep oranges and harsh pinks, and as Sora looks across at the main island, the trees are almost black in the foreground._

 _He looks up at Riku. He is trying to separate the paopu in two with his bare hands, and the juice runs down his fingers and drips onto the sand at their feet. He bites his lip in frustration, and Sora smiles as he scuffs some sand over the juice on the floor. The wind is blowing in Riku’s face, silver strands blocking his vision so that he regularly shakes his hair back. Sora wants to reach up and tuck his behind his ears, but he can’t because they’re best friends and Riku would find that_ weird _._

_“Gotcha!” The fruit tears suddenly in two, fast enough that Riku nearly drops one, and Sora beams._

_“Once we share this, we’re linked forever. Wherever we go, we’ll always come back to one another.”_

_Riku scoffs, his smile bright._

_“You sound like Kairi.”_

_Sora laughs in response, toeing the sand with his shoes as Riku hands him the piece of fruit. “You don’t have to share it with me, if you don’t want to.”_

_Riku briefly looks offended, as though the idea that he wouldn’t share this with Sora is so preposterous the thought alone is an insult. To make a point, he takes his half of the fruit and shoves more than half of it in his mouth at once. Sora snorts at the sight, as Riku struggles to chew and looks more like a hamster than the dignified, to-the-point look he was likely going for._

_Sora takes his own bite. The fruit is mushier than he had expected it to be, and at the gritty feeling in his teeth he kind of wishes he’d washed it first._

_It’s as he’s swallowing his third mouthful, Riku still struggling with his first, that he begins to feel it. Something knocks loose in his heart, and for a moment Sora is breathless in a painful, start-panicking way. The tightness in his chest then eases, before something bursts free from deep inside his chest. Riku is stood before him with a surprised expression on his face, and Sora knows he’s feeling it too. Something flows between them, bright and colourful and very-real, before it pulls taut and snaps into place. Sora feels as though he’s tied to Riku with an invisible cord, and the sensation is surreal and warming and comforting all at the same time._

_They stare at each other, unsure what to say._

_“What was that?”_

_Riku doesn’t answer, and instead swoops down to take Sora’s lips with his own. The kiss is deep, and the paopu fruit falls from Sora’s fingers and thuds against the sand. The kiss solidifies whatever it is that is blooming between them, chaining them to one another in a way not even the paopu fruit can dictate._

_Sora returns home that evening with love in his heart. The dusty, sandy streets are quiet as Sora walks towards his home, the streetlamps lighting his way as the stars shine bright above the island. He expects dreams of love and happy things, things that will warm his heart further._

_He dreams of little, and wakes to nightmares and shadows rippling across the island._

* * *

**San Fransokyo**

* * *

 Sora wakes from his latest _freak out_ by bodily launching himself out of bed. The memory of Port Royal ends just as the cannonball tears through his body, and Sora rolls onto the floor _screaming_ into the night.

He is drooling on the floorboards, a fearful stringy drool he viciously wipes away, before his hands go to his torso and frantically pad at his skin until he is certain he is not full of fucking holes. Neon lights from the skyscraper next door shines in through his black out blinds, and Sora rests his head on the cool floor and resists the temptation to smack his head off it.

This needs to _stop_. Trust him to meet _one_ attractive guy and then suddenly go imagining loads of lives with him! It’s cringe-worthy to a point and exasperating to the next, because Sora has always had an active imagination ever since he was a little boy, having nightmares of yellow-eyed monsters chasing him through the dark. And now _this_?

The digital clock flashes 04:23 at him, and Sora groans quietly. No point going back to bed at this rate, not with his heart pumping a marathon inside his chest, or with his bones aching with the pain of a phantom impact.

Pushing himself off his floor, Sora pads warily from his bedroom to the kitchen, fully awake but not wholly alert. His eyes feel like someone has poured sand into them, and his throat feels like he’s swallowed a swab of wire wool. He flicks his kettle on and leans against the counter, one hand resting on the plastic surface and resting his chin on the other hand.

The kettle boils loudly in front of him, and Sora smiles as the steam comes out the spout. Like a child playing at magic, he twirls his hand above it, close enough to feel the damp heat but far enough that it doesn’t burn.

A fireball flickers in his hand, briefly there but hot and corporeal.

In horror, Sora slams back against the counter behind him. There’s the sound of glass smashing as he knocks nearly all of the glasses on the draining board onto the floor, but Sora doesn’t even notice as he stares at his hand in disbelief. As he moves to steady himself he feels the distinctive tickle-like feeling of glass against his other palm, before that softness turns to pain as his skin slices apart.

Blood drips onto the counter, but when Sora looks at his other hand, there is no wound to speak of.

It’s a testament to his neighbours that no one comes to check on Sora, after likely hearing him scream _and_ smash half his glass cupboard, but no one responds to those, and no one will respond to the sounds of his terrified sobs as he slowly sinks down onto the floor. He is confused and uncertain. He has no idea if he is still dreaming, or if he imagined that brief flicker of fire in his hands. The apartment is empty, the only light coming from the bedroom and the kitchen fan.

The apartment is silent and dark, though the sounds of the city are loud, and to his left he can hear the cat clawing at the floorboards at the front door.

He chokes back an urge that rests between his grinding teeth, and doesn’t know if it’s the urge to fight or fly.


	3. Chapter 3

**Olympus Coliseum**

* * *

Riku wakes up one day and the world turns on its axis.

He is staring up at the Parthenon, that bright and colourful temple to Athena, looking at those beautiful marble visualisations of so many ancient battles, when the world twists and turns inside his head and fills his mind with memories that are and are not his own. The exact moment is when his eyes drift over the eastern side, over that relaxed and lounging Heracles, when something in his subconscious tells him he is pronouncing it _wrong_ , it is _Hercules_.

Like a door ripping open his mind swirls, memories swarming in of a briefest time spent at Olympus Coliseum and invading like flooding water. It drips down his throat and out his nose, choking him with flashes of watching another boy fighting a skinnier hero, which fades away as the boy grows older and the hero bulks out, fighting the hydra of legend. The Parthenon is not the building in his memories; it is the Coliseum of Thebes, a place he now recognises though he has never taken the journey himself.

He remembers a world of heroes, of Hercules the demi-god, Hades the villain, a strict sense of right and wrong but with movement in between, of power that gathers at his fingertips even as he remembers things that cannot possibly be true. A boy, fighting a Hydra with a giant key? Preposterous.

He is no longer Anastasios, Greek hoplite and zeugitae, but a young man confused with two lives warring in his head. He is no longer the pale-skinned Greek with the odd silver hair, but a lifetime of memories returned to their rightful owner. His new memories depict a segment of the Age of Heroes in startling realism, and it terrifies him.

It terrifies him because the Age of Heroes has long since passed into the Age of Man, and Riku is certain that Athens is the first awakening. But if that is the case, how long has passed? How much have the worlds changed? Has time passed normally? For if so, the tales of the Age of Heroes are centuries old, and the world has already forgotten much of what his memories tell him.

Riku never gets the chance to explore the world after he awakens. He never gets the chance to follow the golden chain that flares up inside his chest, to follow it across Greece to where the other end worships in the Asklepieion. His hoplite duties come first, Sparta approaches Athens like a cloud, and Riku’s inability to think clearly as muscle memory fights against new memories of battle means that he does not last long on the field.

But it is the last time that Riku fails to remember who he really is.

* * *

  **San Fransokyo**

* * *

 To Sora’s surprise, despite his vivid hallucinations and slowly loosening grasp on sanity, his relationship with Riku seems to flourish.

He has half a mind to call the whole thing off at first, half terrified of what he had done that night in his kitchen, and fully certain that he needed to calm himself down before he could commit to any sort of relationship with the man he is having strange dreams about. But Riku grounds him, makes him feel safe and sane in a way that Sora only feels when he is worked to the bone and unable to think at all.

They mostly see each other on evenings, with Sora unable to leave the café closed on weekdays, but it is fast and thrilling none the less. It is evenings lost in the tangle and bright lights of the city, a dozen theatres and a thousand shows Sora has never wanted to see on his own. But with Riku with him, he relearns the beauty of San Fransokyo, a cultural side he has never had much reason to cross into. It is dazzling nights on the most well-lit streets, for there is not much else to do when the sun goes down in the city that never sleeps.

He tries not to think too much on what his mind is making him see, focuses instead on the warm grip of Riku’s hand in his own and the thudding of his heart in his chest. He ignores his brain entirely, the little voice that tells him this is _familiar_ , this closeness is nothing _new._ There is a door somewhere in his mind that he needs to open, but he steers well away from it and tries to deny to himself that his problems are getting worse.

Being around Riku is also hard to resist. The bond that Sora thinks is growing between them is impossibly strong and incredibly demanding, open and content when Riku is near Sora and cold and miserable when they are apart. It worries Sora, that an attachment so strong can form so quickly with this silver-haired man he has known for only a few months. But Sora only spends more time with Riku, for time with him leaves him content and warm and uncaring, and Sora tries not to think about the fact that he is certain he could follow that golden bond and find Riku with it, if he tried.

But one weekend, the first in weeks that he has spent alone, Sora cannot escape the niggling thoughts. Riku is away, a business trip he says though he had resolutely declined any offer of accompaniment to the airport, and Sora locks up the café on a cold Friday night and tries to decide how to get home.

The tram is out of the question. So is walking. He cannot really afford a cab, and to be frank he doesn’t even _want_ to go home. He is scared of what might happen without his mind distracted by a pretty face and a flutter in his stomach, but his cat needs feeding and she’ll only punish him with silence if he fails to return on time.

He takes the subway instead.

It is not a better option.

The subway is packed to the brim, everyone fitting in like sardines in a tin. Sora is one of the last on the carriage, holding on tightly to the bumpy yellow pole that he leans against. It is warm, uncomfortably so, and he rests his forehead against the cool pole as the doors slide shut behind him.

The light is too harsh and yellow, worse than the trams, and Sora feels claustrophobic as the screeching of the train winding through tight tunnels fills the carriage. He nearly falls twice, and the train shudders. The sound is like a shutter, repeating in his mind and in front of his brain, and Sora is so _hot_ , pulling at the scarf on his neck even though his hands are still cold. Something in his heart tugs, stretches, as though whatever is on the other end of the golden thread is disappearing from the world, lost to the stars he studies.

The train speeds up, the shuttering and juddering coming faster and faster, and Sora shakes his head, dread seeping into his bones and chilling his core.

And then he is falling, down, down, down.

* * *

**Wonderland**

* * *

“Who are you?”

“ _I’m_ the mad hatter.”

“You look nothing like the Mad Hatter. This is a poor costume.”

A head cocks to the side.

“Who says there is only one hatter?”

“ _Fine_ , but you have to have a _name_. Everyone has a name.”

“What’s the point in telling you my name? It’s not like you’ll recognise it.”

Sora is mightily confused.

He has no idea where he is, for starters. He had been wandering through the countryside, _wandering,_ not fleeing, when he _thought_ he had fallen into a ditch. Only, he woke up in a forest that looks nothing like the plain fields he had been walking through. Now, he sits at the most haphazardly dressed table he has ever seen in his life, with the most _absurdly_ dressed man who lazily lounges across a high-backed chair like he owns the forest. One leg is swung over an arm of the chair, and he looks at Sora with the most curious expression. His face is alabaster white, as though he has pressed a whole tin of pearl powder onto his face, the one that Sora knows Kairi wears but he can’t ask about because that’s _rude_. His eyes are startling, an unforgiving harsh gold that is lined in deep black liner. Sora can’t see his hair, tucked as it is into a large top hat.

“Your speech is strange.”

“My speech is-“ The man leans forward, repeating Sora’s words in confusion, before he sits back in his chair and roars with laughter. The sound is unsettling in the silent forest, and Sora squirms in his seat. “ _You're_ the one who’s talking weird. Tell me, what year is it up there?”

Sora cocks his head. This man is nonsensical.

“Surely it is the same year down here?”

The man leans forward, but his grin is not quite real, more a baring of shiny white teeth.

“Time flows differently in Wonderland. Might as well be a different world.”

Sora gapes.

“ _Wonderland_? Are you- do you mean _Alice’s_ Adventures in Wonderland?”

All humour disappears from the man’s face, contorted into confusion and – is that _hope_?

“You remember Alice?”

Sora snorts.

“Of course I remember that book. Everyone’s read it.” Sora’s voice is matter-of-fact, but the man leans back into his chair with disappointment plain on his features.

“Ack, I don’t even know why I bother getting my hopes up anymore.”

Sora frowns, again.

“You really don’t make any sense. How can we be in Wonderland?”

“What, you think we decked out a corner of a forest near your fancy estate and decided to play an elaborate prank?”

“Maybe? Wonderland doesn’t exist, it’s a _book_.”

The man stands from his chair, moving around the table to get closer to Sora. His eyes are even more unsettling up close, and Sora inches into his seat.

“How do you know Wonderland doesn’t exist? Perhaps your world doesn’t exist, perhaps you are a figment of thought in the dreams of the Red King?” He leans down to rest his arms on the chair Sora is sitting in, and he smells of mint and pine trees. In two quick movements, he removes something strange and filmy from his eyes, and the gold turns a deep shade of aqua. Sora is transfixed, and the man smirks as he removes his hat, revealing scandalously long silver hair that falls down his back and over his shoulders. Sora wonders how the hat could have held it.

He holds his hand out, not towards Sora but towards the chair opposite them, and suddenly there is something long and shiny in his hands. It is peculiar, a giant key in silver and yellow and red, with a curious sigil hanging from a silver chain. The hatter’s smile is warm, but his eyes are curious as he moves it so it Sora can see the whole thing in all its shining glory.

“Do you recognise this?”

Sora absolutely does not.

He holds his hand out, fingers touching the cool metal hilt not far from where the strange man’s fingers are holding it steady. It buzzes beneath his touch, familiar in the way that it comforts his soul. Something claws in his chest, fights to burst through and break free, but whatever it is, it is held back by a cloud heavier than any darkness.

The weapon is _familiar_ , and Sora knows it is not _his_ but he _has_ come into contact with it before. How, he cannot say, and the more he tries to push through the cloudy haze the sharper his sudden splitting headache becomes.

The hatter’s smile turns sad, and with a flourish of his fingers the weapon disappears. Sora doesn’t even understand how he knows it is a weapon.

“It was worth a try.” With that, he pulls a pocket watch out and glances at the time. There are no numbers, only wonky lines on the clock face, but the man frowns. “It is time for you to leave, Sora. The portal was opened for the arrival of another, and you are not her.”

A cat appears at his shoulders, outrageously purple, and Sora finds the chair disappeared from under him.

“Wait, please, what is your _name?_ ”

The man’s smile is sad, and he looks to the empty table as Sora is nudged towards the forest path.

“Riku. But you won’t recognise it.”

Sora _does_ recognise it. He just doesn’t know _how_.

* * *

**San Fransokyo**

* * *

 Sora wakes in a seat on the empty subway train, a blanket draped over his shoulders and a kind lady knelt before him, a bottle of water in her hand.

He frowns at the bottle, ignoring the pain at the back of his skull where his head collided with the carriage floor. He is loath to believe these imaginative dreams of his, but there is a pattern, something that does not add up in all of them.

Apart from the first one, Riku has appeared exactly as he is now, all-knowing and suave and cool-tempered. Riku has _known_ Sora, though he has existed at varying levels of willingness when it comes to letting Sora know that.

He does not understand his suspicions, but they are there.

Sora pushes away the bottle being offered to him, and holds his head in his hands. He is going mad, _really_ going mad, and he is realising that he needs to _see_ someone, to talk about this.

His cries are tearless.

* * *

_Sora is on one of the balconies in Yen Sid’s tower when Riku comes to find him._

_“You should be sleeping.” He calls over his shoulder as the glass door opens. A smirk twists Riku’s lips, soft but serious as his eyes rake over Sora._

_“So should you.” He turns his gaze to the sky, to the thousands of worlds that glitter up there. The time to save them arrives swiftly, but Riku tries to concentrate on the gorgeous colour of the sky in this area of the universe. It is a mass of purples and blues and golds, and yet it is not much different to the sight they would be treated to on the play island. Perhaps it is brighter, the colours sharper, and Riku wonders if that is because Yen Sid’s tower is on a tiny patch of a world all to itself._

_“I’m worried, about tomorrow.”_

_“Come on Sora, you know you’re stronger than you think. You won’t fall.”_

_“I know, but I just… I just have this feeling, y’know?”_

_“Sense of impending doom? Huge pit in your stomach that makes you feel sick?” Riku asks. Sora nods. “That was just lunch. Your duck didn’t cook it right.”_

_Sora laughs, punches Riku in the arm before his hand trails down the length of it. He entwines their fingers gently, and Riku’s grip is warm._

_“I’ll do my best to keep you safe. And besides, at the risk of sounding like a total_ sap _, we’re connected. We have been ever since we shared that paopu fruit.” Riku taps Sora’s chest lightly, and Sora feels the soul bond between them flutter at the contact. It has been this way ever since they shared the paopu fruit, an inexplicable and unyielding golden bond that guides them to one another and acts as a beacon. Aqua had said it was the most powerful soul bond she had ever seen, and they have used it well over the years leading up to tomorrow, the denouement of years of blood, sweat and tears._

_Sora smiles at him, and Riku leans down to kiss him gently. It is a kiss of comfort, unlike their usual fast and urgent kisses stolen only when they can take them. Riku's free hand cups Sora’s jaw carefully, intending to be warm and present for him rather than a pressure. It eases Sora’s worries and fears, and the brunet melts into it._

_But the sense of doom remains._

* * *

**Destiny Islands**

* * *

 

The Destiny Islands are as beautiful as they have always been.

They have changed monumentally in the years: the play island is merely a simple island now, off the coast from the mainland and rarely used except by divers. The vast array of wood that had formed the playhouse has been lost to time, having rotted away from disuse and disrepair over the centuries. Nature has reclaimed her walls and the cliff-face, and the laughter of children is a distant memory heard faintly on the wind. If he were to dig in the sand, he is sure he would find some of the original wooden slats, but whether they would be recognisable is another question entirely.

But still, it is beautiful. He misses the place, in a fond nostalgic way, but not once over the thousand lives he has lived has he fully committed to returning. Especially not now, with Sora in San Fransokyo.

The sound of the waves gently lapping the shore is only interrupted intermittently by the seagulls, but otherwise the island is silent. It is calm and still, holding dear to its heart a thousand memories of a thousand children, forgotten and lost to time. It longs for the laughter of innocence to whisper along the wind again, and perhaps one day the Islanders will think of it once more as a place to explore and build castles.

For now, it stays forgotten, as silent as the lone grave it guards.

He transports himself to the part of the island where the palm tree used to stand, the walkway long gone. He, along with Kairi, had been responsible for destroying the wooden bridge that gave access to it. Perhaps that had signalled the end of the play island, but they had no better location in mind to place the grave.

The headstone is no longer recognisable. Centuries of standing high and taking the battering from wind, sand and salt-water has eroded away any information the stone once held. Riku remains the only one who remembers the name stamped across it, remembers the life it briefly described.

He’s the only one who remembers the occupant within.

Grimly, he wonders if there is even a body there anymore. They had no time to get a coffin, or even a wooden box. They had wrapped the body with linens and lowered it into as deep a hole as their injuries would permit them to dig. The headstone had been a later edition, and even that is nearly gone.

He wonders if the keyblade has rusted away, or if its own magic may have saved it from the passage of time. He can’t even remember which one was lowered in with him. Was it Oblivion or Oathkeeper, that made that bone-chilling clang of metal on marble as it dropped from long fingers down an endless flight of stairs?

Riku looks at the other side of the stone by chance, when he is brushing it over with a raggedy tea-cloth to get rid of the sand. He nearly drops the cloth.

The remains of the flowers in the vase are old, little more than structured mush. It has been years since Riku was last here, but the little red spotted vase looks as though it has been there since not long after his last visit. It is mostly faded, more pink than red, but the flowers are only months old.

He holds his breath, surprised and uncertain.

Somewhere out there is another person who remembers.

* * *

**San Fransokyo**

* * *

 

The San Fransokyo bridge is dizzyingly high. Sora leans against the red railing to look down at the water below. The lights from the city are so bright that the water is clearly visible even from this height, though the waves below are still intimidating. He can hear the water rushing, can see the rain pelting down on it, and briefly wonders what it would feel like to hit the surface.

As gentle and welcoming as it sometimes looks, he knows it would feel like hitting a wall of concrete.

Alarmed at his own thought processes, Sora pulls back a little from his position leaning over the railing. It is not windy, but he can hear the sounds of the traffic behind him and in the city itself. It’s never _truly_ dark in San Fransokyo. Even on a moonless night, the neon lights are bright enough that night never seems to fall. His eyes are transfixed on the water, on the blues and oranges and pinks and greens that stretch out across the bay.

He thinks of another body of water that lies buried in his consciousness. A sandy shore, where on a moonless night the waves lapped gently against the sand, pitch black and nearly invisible in the low light. He thinks of that same ocean on a bright night, streaks of white across the water that somehow makes it even more intimidating. He remembers it, faintly, remembers that if he kept quiet, there would be virtually no sound in the air. No cars on the island, no boats late at night, no buzzing of the street lamps to drown out thoughts.

He thinks of Port Royal’s ocean, lit bright in the evenings with orange from the lanterns, the island consumed in a constant yellow and orange glow.

Footsteps tap gently on the walkway, heading towards him. The steps are slightly hesitant, and Sora focuses on them as the bitter, windless cold seeps into his bones.

Sora turns his head slightly, nodding in the direction of the approaching figure. His question will either make total sense, or be utter nonsense, and which of those it is will help Sora decide if he is remembering the impossible, or going insane.

“What do you know?”

Riku sucks in a breath.

“Everything.”

* * *

_The battle is bloody and brutal._

_Riku is occupied with the young Xehanort, unable to focus on anything else. The other man’s strikes are too quick, fast and coming from all directions, and Riku can only hear the sound of his keyblade smacking off the other man’s._

_He registers, somewhere in the back of his consciousness, the sound of a keyblade tearing through fabric and leather and metal, easier than a hot knife through butter. Somewhere in the hall, Kairi screeches_ no _, and then Terra is pushing him away from the younger Xehanort with a desperate look on his face._

 _The golden bond in his chest_ snaps _, and the pain_ burns _. It races through his blood at the same moment he hears the sound again, merely seconds from the first. He turns, the sickening sound of metal clattering onto marble echoing through the hall as he sees the sight at the top of the stairs._

 _It happens in excruciatingly slow motion. Xemnas holds a sagging Sora over the edge of the stairs by his necklace, his eyes moving from the brunet’s face to look down at Riku. The keyblade Sora has been using falls hilt-first onto the first step, bounces once, and then rattles down the remaining steps as Xemnas smirks. The necklace chain snaps, and Riku has barely_ moved _, barely_ registered _what is going on when Sora’s body falls backwards. He hits the stairs with a dull thud that cannot be heard over the ringing of keyblades clashing, and is little more than a crumpled form at the bottom of the stairs by the time Riku reaches him._

 _Riku pulls at Sora desperately, hands pressing to wounds that bleed too profusely. Sora’s eyes are closed, but the blood is still pulsing out and Riku is covered in it. He tries a healing spell, tries to bind Sora’s life to his own until the battle is over, but the blood still spills out, slower with each passing second. He tries again, a second binding, but the ache in his heart is akin to being stabbed, the soul-bond broken._ Don’t die, don’t die _, he desperately thinks, but though Aqua is covering him Riku can’t concentrate well enough through the pain and his tears._

 _He tugs at Sora’s shoulders, pulling him up and begging him to open his eyes, wiping his own and leaving streaks of Sora’s blood across his cheeks. But there is no expression on Sora’s face, as his mouth is open slackly and his eyes are closed, and he is almost sleeping but Riku needs him to_ wake up _._

_Riku tries a final binding spells, pulls at every emotion within him and tugs hard on the other side of the snapped bond, visualises himself dragging it back with all his strength. It flickers, the once gold thread now a rotting and dying black, like the wick of a burning candle._

_The thread pulses once and turns an ashen grey, and Riku feels the pain in his chest amplify a thousand times over. It is not snapped, not broken, but dormant. It is a harsh reminder that the paopu joins two souls, not two hearts, and Riku can do nothing when one heart has stopped beating. His binding spell has failed._

_For Sora never opens his eyes no matter how long Riku begs, and when Riku places two fingers to his pulse point, there is no heartbeat._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since I realise the bit at the beginning with Riku could be confusing, here are the definitions of the greek words!  
> Zeugitae - a social class in ancient Athens, the second lowest but they made enough dry/wet food that they could afford their own armour  
> Hoplite - The foot soldiers in the Athenian army who formed the phalanx formation  
> Asklepieion - Healing temple of Asclepius, the god of medicine. Sora is in one of these, though Riku doesn't know it.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very sorry for the long wait between chapters: work caught up to me, I guess, but I hope you all find the final chapter worth the wait, and I hope it ties everything up well. If not, just let me know and I will try to fix any loose threads :)

_They don’t dig for very long._

_Kairi supposes that it is because the dirt is fairly soft, but so easily packable when soaked with water. But it doesn’t matter: they must dig quickly and be gone from here as soon as possible. Already the risk of discovery is too great, their position too far out in the open, and only by staying away can they keep the Destiny Islands safe. It is a bitter pill, a rushed burial for her dearest friend, but Riku digs and digs as Kairi works on destroying the bridge to their small part of the island._

_Once it is gone, Kairi stands at the lip of the edge. It is still, as though the very birds themselves can detect the danger that could descend upon them. Even the waves only lap gently on the shore, but the sun is so bright that her shoulders are raw, and even Riku is beginning to burn._

_“It’s done.”_

_She turns, eyes seeking out Riku’s, but his are cast to the floor as they so often have been the past three days. She follows his gaze, unsurprised to see it landing on the thinly wrapped body by the side of the hole._

_She swallows a lump in her throat. It’s not right, to see Sora so pale and cold in this place, where all their memories remember him warm and sun-kissed. They had cleaned him with the ocean water, desperate to wash out the blood, and Riku had sewn up the front of his clothes as best he could. They had wrapped him more for their own sake than for his modesty, unable to bear it any longer. Nevertheless, Kairi hesitates._

_“Do you- I mean…should we say goodbye?”_

_Riku tenses his jaw and looks to the side, and she knows he is furiously blinking away tears. She wishes she could join him: she has exhausted all tears. But then, Riku always had more to lose, and his heart was so tightly bound with Sora’s that she cannot imagine the loss. She only knows that it is a gaping wound in Riku’s chest that won’t be healed. Her lover did not die in battle: his did, and horribly at that._

_“I’ve said my goodbye.” Is all Riku says, before Kairi nods and joins him next to Sora’s body. Riku gathers the linens at the top, whilst Kairi takes the bottom, and together they hoist him up and lower him into the haphazard grave._

_Kairi fills the grave in, because something about the action breaks through to Riku, and he mostly stares at the grave in horror and grief._

_When it is done, only the raised ground is evidence of the grave, and even that will sink in time. They have no stone, no marker, and Kairi hears Riku’s breath hitch. She puts her arm around his shoulder, and guides him into a comforting embrace._

_Half a year later she returns with Aqua, a heavy headstone carried between them. They are free from Xehanort, from the darkness, but it has come at much too high a cost. Lea will never be the same again, Ventus will likely never have a full night’s sleep as long as he lives, and Riku…_

_There had not even been a body, at the end of it all. She digs a small hole next to Sora’s grave with sadness in her heart, and buries the keychain for Riku’s keyblade._

* * *

Sora follows Riku back across the bridge, anticipation thrumming along his skin even as his gut tells him to turn around, to flee the unknown that stares him in the face with a gaping maw.

Sora simultaneously feels sick and nervous, excited and uncertain. He knows Riku offers answers, a promise of clarity that he cannot find in the ocean of fear that surrounds him. He has spent too long believing he was going _mad_ , and perhaps he still _is_ , how is _he_ to know that Riku isn’t just some psychopath taking advantage of his confusion?

Sora sends a nervous, brittle look towards Riku, and the silver-haired man tuts as he catches sight of it.

“You know enough now to know I pose no threat, surely.”

Sora’s eyes flick to the floor in shame, a reply ready on the tip of his tongue, but he trails off when he realises where they are.

It’s no Meguro or Pacific Heights, but it’s close enough. Sora knows that Riku must make a pretty penny in his line of work, but even _he_ doesn’t think that it could earn him enough to afford an apartment in this area of San Fransokyo. They stand outside the gates of an apartment building likely no bigger than Sora’s, but the brunet knows that where his block contains about twenty apartments, Riku’s looks as though it holds _five_ , _maximum_. Where Sora’s block is tall and grey and _old_ , this building is clearly a recent build, all glass walls and sleek black metal panelling, a clear example of what San Fransokyo can build when it focuses on the modern and not the traditional.

Sora swallows thickly. He had no idea Riku even had this sort of money.

Riku’s apartment is the top floor, _because of course it’s a whole floor_ , and Sora is awkwardly let inside before Riku tries to busy himself with the kettle and tea. Sora wanders over to the wall of windows, a huge floor length thing that makes him feel _tiny_ , and kind of understands why Riku chose this place. He can see all the way down the hill, right to the bay, with very little obstruction. The neon lights that flood the bay with colour are close enough to be appreciated, but far enough away that closing the curtains will block out most of the city noise and lights.

The interior of the apartment is nice, as subdued as Riku is. There are no flashy colours or modern artwork hanging on the walls, but there _are_ scaled-down models of the pirate ship  _Excalibur,_  and the gummi ship  _Highwind_ ,on a shelf by the bookcase. Sora laughs at them.

Aside from that, however, it is sparsely decorated with very little that is  _personal_. It looks more like Riku found a nice mahogany and dark-wood colour scheme in a catalogue and mass ordered the lot: it matches _too_ perfectly. The lights are low, the interior of the open-plan space mostly lit up by the lights from the bay. Sora can feel Riku watching him warily from the kitchen counter, his fingers tapping on the dark wooden counter as the kettle bubbles.

Sora smiles at him before he turns, draping his coat and scarf over the back of an armchair and lowering himself into it. It faces the nice view, and Sora watches a taxi drive down the hill as he briefly allows himself to have a moment of introspective panic. Why is he here? Why is he _here_ in San Fransokyo, waking up for what seems to be the first time? Why does he have these strange memory-like dreams, where Riku features in every single one?

Why does he feel like they are real? And if they are, why has he woken up _now_ , when Riku has lived so many without him? Why is he aware _here_ when he doesn’t really feel aware _-_

His train of thought is cut off by Riku dragging another chair so he is sat to Sora’s left, facing the brunet and in his line of sight, but not blocking the view of the city. A warm cup of plum tea is placed into his hands, and the salty smell makes him feel nostalgic.

“How can you afford this place?” Sora is aware the question is rude, but Riku doesn’t look like he minds.

“You live enough lives, you learn to hide provisions for the next one.” A smirk lifts his lips. “Though most of it comes from Port Royal.” Sora doesn’t miss the hint of mischief in his eyes, the subtle pride that settles in the set of his jaw and the pursing of his lips.

* * *

“We’re not the only ones this has happened to.” Riku starts, his voice calm and slow, as though he expects Sora to bolt anytime soon. To his surprise, Sora nods.

“In Wonderland, Kairi was there.”

At that Riku raises his brows. “Really? I came across her once, in Agrabah. It was…long after you had left.”

Sora swallows thickly. “Did she remember?”

“She was dead.” The pause is lengthy in the silence, but Riku continues. “In Port Royal, I was raised with Terra as my brother. In Atlantica, Aqua was there. Namine was in Wonderland. Oh, and Lea turned up in Halloween Town.”

“Did any of them remember?”

Riku looks hesitant before he answers. “I don’t know. Aqua probably did, but she was brilliant at hiding it, and I didn’t see Lea for long enough to know. Namine was… an odd one. She had a house in the woods, and the walls were decorated with memories of her life outside of Kairi, but I don’t know if she _knew_.”

Sora bites his lip.

“She probably knew. And Terra?”

Riku laughs.

“Put it this way: I was beginning to get bitter about all of these lives, and Terra was still the big brooding hulk he used to be. Combine that with the fact that he had no idea if I knew, he didn’t dare ask. And I didn’t have the courage to ask him either. I think he did, though. He would have these awful nightmares, and one night on Tortuga he got drunk and sobbed all night for Aqua and Ventus. But I think you might be the only one who really, _truly_ forgot, and that might be because you were already fading when I cast the spell.”

Sora’s heart aches at the information about Terra. He has missed so many opportunities across so many lives, but at least he didn’t keep waking up in new lives _knowing_ everyone he knew had stopped existing. He latches onto the last tidbit of information Riku has supplied.

“Spell? What spell?”

Riku sits back in his chair, the plum tea forgotten on the table between them. Sora is still nursing his cup, though it has gone lukewarm.

“Do you remember your injury in the battle?” Riku asks quietly, and Sora shakes his head. “You were dying, and I cast a binding spell thinking it would keep you alive until I could get you to Aqua.”

“But it didn’t work, right?”

Riku shakes his head, and his expression is gloomy.

“We’d shared the paopu fruit, we were already bound. Instead, I tightly bound our souls. But not just ours. At first, I thought it only affected anyone who had shared the fruit, but I’ve never seen Ventus, and Namine wouldn’t appear at all if that was the case.”

There is a contemplative pause, as Riku tries to piece it together from his memories and Sora tries to put it together from the fragments that he remembers, but it is a difficult thing when he _sees_ the memories but doesn’t really count them as his own.

“So…”

Riku hums, before his eyes catch Sora’s again. “I think it affected everyone in the room. Ventus wasn’t at that battle, so it would explain why I haven’t seen him. But Mickey was, and so was Roxas, and I haven’t seen them either. And Xehanort has never come back from what I can tell, but then _he_ was split across twelve vessels, so maybe that is a reason we haven't seen him. Maybe it bound all of the keyblade wielders, regardless of who was in there, and I just haven’t come across the others yet. After all, you’re not meant to use binding spells on _souls_.”

"So you  _don't_ know why we're here?"

Riku shrugs. "We're here because I cast a spell I had no business trying to cast in the first place.  _We're_ here because we were already bound by the paopu fruit, so we  _always_ come back together. The others come back at different times, sometimes we cross over but most times we don't, and that's probably because I cast that spell. But I don't know the _how_ of it, and I don't know for sure how many it affected. Aqua would know, but I don't know where she is,  _if_ she's even here."

“It must have been a powerful binding spell.” Sora observes, and Riku nods.

“I put my all into it, and I paid for it. My magic was never the same after that, it was so much weaker, and it got me killed in the end.”

Sora is not entirely sure what to say in response. There is so much to say, so much to _remember_ , and not nearly enough time in the world to discuss it.

But Sora starts, eager to know, and Riku indulges him all the same. They talk well into the night, even as the hours grow longer and Sora grows sleepier.

He falls asleep curled up in the armchair, and doesn’t feel the blanket when it is draped over him.

* * *

_“Your timing is impeccable.”_

_Sora moans and wriggles as his eyes open, and the sight is unexpected. His hands are bound behind him, around a thick wooden pole, and the only reason he is standing is because of the ropes around his waist, and the ones tying his wrists together behind the pole. Next to him, similarly tied up on another pole, is Riku._

_Only, it’s Riku and it’s not Riku. The wider hips and fuller bust, with much longer, scraggly hair, would make him think it is not. But the face, even with the slimmer jaw, is undeniably Riku. Sora looks down through long brunette hair, and gasps at the sight of his own feminine figure._

_Someone puts a torch to the mass of wood and straw they’re standing on, and Sora groans. Despite the situation, Riku smirks._

_“Like I said,_ impeccable _.” Then she frowns. “Just breathe in deeply. If you’re lucky, the smoke will knock you out before the pain.”_

_Sora does exactly that._

* * *

_Memories of a thousand lives swirl around in his mind after that memory, remembrance only a step away in every one._

_They are there one moment and gone the next, memories of whole lives flashing in an instant. There is the memory of an invasion, a Calormene soldier shouting his name across Cair Paravel before he is run through by another._

_There is a city of dazzling emeralds, and eyes meeting for the first and last time through the bars of cells in the Southstairs political prison._

__Sora sees the dome barrier coming down on the inner city, but is washed away by the tide before the silver-haired Atlantian can save him._ _

_He remembers a land ravaged by blight and Lothering destroyed, a silver-haired wild-elf leading him to safety and leaving him._

_They’re in a small town in Maine, and Sora is too curious, crosses over the town border without realising and forgets it all, all over again._

_He sees a dragon descending on the lonely mountain, but sees no trace of silver-hair in the dwarves that flee past Dale._

_Their eyes connect across the pews at the coronation of a queen, but the ice and the cold gets to one of them before the queen returns to save them._

_He sees a thousand lives in a thousand worlds, Andalasia, Montressor, Neverland, France, Atlantica, Prydain._

_He sees them all, and he awakens._

* * *

The struggle is brief, dull and sluggish like trying to walk through wet concrete, a path of wet sand, waist-high. But finally, a light opens in the darkness, something he can grasp and touch and grab onto. He pulls and he pushes, swimming through water whilst wearing sandbags, and then he breaks through the glass and fills his lungs with oxygen.

His eyes open slowly, and Sora wakes.

And this time he is _Sora_ , not the San Fransokyo cafe owner who had been living with memories of other people in his mind, but actually _Sora_. The man he was an hour ago slots into his mind as another memory, as distant as all but the first, and he glances down at himself in the dim light of the room. The lights have been turned off, but the apartment is still well-lit by the city’s skyscrapers. The silence is almost eerie, the type that descends when most people in the building are asleep. He can hear the sound of a car driving over smooth asphalt, and the low sound of Riku’s breathing from the other armchair, where the man dozes. Relief and love and thankfulness burst in Sora’s heart as he glances over, because he is finally _here_. It feels like a thousand years since he has seen Riku, and in a way it _has_.

His thoughts make him think of those final moments, Xemnas’ double slash with a _keyblade_ feeling like a large and deep papercut, so sharp was the blade, his blood warm like bathwater spilling on his shirt. He remembers the bubble of blood bursting at the corner of his lips and running over his teeth as Xemnas dangled him over the stairs, held in place only by the necklace around his neck. He remembers hearing it snap, distantly, already fading as he fell back.

He doesn’t remember hitting the floor or tumbling down the steps, but he can remember Riku’s hurried chanting as their paopu link decayed.

He knows his dreams will be unpleasant for a _long_ time.

Sora feels as though he has been sleep walking, eternally present in every life but slumbering, unable to burst through and break free. He feels as though the chains have fallen from his wrists, and he is so _happy_ he could _fly_.

Sitting up straighter in the armchair, Sora glances back over to Riku and cannot stop himself from staring. He looks a good eight years older than he did when Sora really last saw him, though he knows from his memories of looking in the mirror yesterday morning that he too is older.

But Riku seems bigger somehow, having shook off the last vestiges of boyhood that had plagued him even up to Sora’s death. His jaw is still delicate, but a little wider, his cheekbones more pronounced and his hair cut properly even tied up as it is. He’s broader, even though he's curled up, and Sora’s eyes linger appreciatively on his forearms.

But still there is something missing, and Sora furrows his brow at his faint reflection in the window as he tries to figure out what. There is a niggling feeling, the innate knowledge that something isn’t quite _right_ lingering there in his soul even as he relishes being in Riku’s company once again. He follows the feeling, feeling ridiculously introspective even as he searches, rooting out the missing item in his heart with every deep breath he takes.

Something warm pulls at the edge of his being, encouraging, and Sora really _looks_ at it, and _there_. The little rope that had been braided into his heart the day he shared the paopu with Riku is still there, dark but alive, pulsing gently in the furthest reaches of his mind. The door is closed on it, the other side completely dark through Riku’s own choice, but Sora smiles and yanks the door open.

The soul bond flares to life, different to all the times Riku had briefly let an unknowing Sora catch a glimpse of it, for this time Sora is the one rekindling it and he does so _knowing_ what it is. For a moment it is almost painful, the feeling of it filling his heart and reshaping everything about his soul until he cannot see which part of it belongs to him and which belongs to Riku. But then it settles, nestles warmly in an alcove in his heart and remains there, content.

Across from him, Riku’s eyes flicker open before he inhales sharply. His gaze is on Sora, and Sora can feel his heart breaking at the expression on the older man’s face. There is hope in the slight upturning of his lips, but his narrowed eyes and furrowed brows show only hesitation and uncertainty, the result of years of disappointed hopes.

Sora stands up from his armchair, letting the blanket pool at the floor, and kneels beside Riku’s armchair with his hands folded across the arm. Riku’s eyes track him as he moves, his expression unchanging and his body as still as a statue, and Sora smiles.

“Hey.”

Riku’s brow relaxes a little, and he clears his throat loudly in the silent room. “Are you... I mean, is it…” He trails off, his tongue darting out to wet his lips in his uncertainty, his mind unable to form the words he needs to ask. But Sora knows the question, and he nods.

“It’s me. It’s really _me_.”

Riku’s gaze doesn’t waver, and his expression still doesn’t change as he stares at Sora, his eyes searching his face for _something_ , Sora knows not what. He keeps his own expression open, willing Riku to _see_.

A choked noise escapes Riku’s throat, before to Sora’s surprise he slides down the front of the armchair and pulls Sora to him with all the strength he possesses. Sora breathes out a laugh of relief as he is pulled into a warm and almost excruciatingly tight embrace, but he allows Riku this moment as the other man buries his face into Sora’s shoulder and clutches at him like a lifeline.

Sora runs his fingers through his hair, removing the hair-tie as he does so and relishing the feel of this older Riku against him. Whilst Riku could never have been called scrawny, he might as well have been in comparison to how he is now, and though his hair is shorter it is still soft as Sora gently scrapes his nails along his scalp to comfort him.

Riku pulls back, his cheeks flushed at his loss of composure, but his eyes still hold disbelief as he traces his fingers along Sora’s jaw. A shiver runs up Sora’s spine at the contact.

“It’s really you. I’d given up hope.”

And Sora knows that, because he can still remember his life in San Fransokyo, and can remember how _sad_ Riku looked whenever he thought Sora wasn’t looking at him, how he had always looked as though his heart was physically aching.

“I know.” Sora leans forward and places the lightest of kisses on his lips, and smiles. “But I’m back now, and I’m not going anywhere.”

Riku’s smile is blinding, but Sora has no time to appreciate it as Riku slides his hand behind Sora’s neck and pulls him back to him, and _finally_ Sora gets the kiss he has been waiting for. It is sloppy and desperate as they try to fit against each other, Sora hands pulling at Riku’s shirt before their teeth clack and Sora winces, laughing into the next kiss.

Riku’s other hand moves to the small of his back, and Sora feels himself being shifted as the kiss slows, Riku’s mouth moving to kiss a blazing trail along his jaw and down his neck. Sora runs one hand through Riku’s hair even as the other man grunts in annoyance at Sora’s legs preventing him from lowering Sora to the floor. They shift again, Sora’s lips being taken in a bruising kiss that is more careful, more calculated as Riku tries to manoeuvre him gently backwards.

It doesn’t work, as Sora’s head makes a light smacking noise as it hits the rug, and the brunet bursts out into laughter that not even Riku can kiss away. He pulls back, looking down at Sora with amusement on his lips.

“Sora, I love you, but will you pack it in already?” He’s not annoyed, not really, and Sora lets go of Riku to rub at his eyes mid-laughter.

“I can’t! At this rate I’ll be unconscious before we even get to the good stuff.”

Riku’s cheeks darken even as he rolls his eyes.

“I’m not doing all _that_ badly.”

Sora smirks.

“Of course not. I’m sure you’ll remember how to take me properly, with time.”

Riku scowls, and the sight is so hilarious to Sora that he bursts into laughter once more, and doesn’t protest when Riku pulls him to his feet and drags him off towards the bedroom.

Sora learns quickly that Riku’s memory hasn’t faded _at all_ with time.

* * *

They don’t talk about it again until the next morning, when Sora is sitting at the island in Riku’s kitchen, his legs folded beneath him on the high stool despite Riku’s warnings that he _will_ fall off.

Riku leans against the counter on the other side, a cup of tea in his hands as Sora eats far too many slices of buttery toast, and it’s so achingly _normal_ that Sora realises it is probably the most normal any of their lives have been since before the Destiny Islands fell to the darkness.

Sora pushes the plate away with a groan.

“I feel sick.”

Riku takes a sip of his drink with a smirk.

“I _told_ you that you would.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sora fiddles with the sleeve of the dressing gown he’s wearing, pilfered from the back of Riku’s door. “Do you think Kairi’s out there somewhere?”

Riku nods.

“I do. And I wonder if the others are too.”

Sora accepts the information by biting his lip, a look of concentration on his face. “Do you think we could go search for them?”

He’s given a smile from Riku.

“I was hoping you would ask that. I think Kairi and I have always remembered, whether she let you know that or not when we were in Wonderland: it was her I was waiting for, dressed as that infernal hatter. If you’ve come back properly, I have a feeling others might have too. It will be difficult to find them all, but not impossible.”

Sora grins.

“Good thing we like a challenge!”

Riku places the cup on the counter, and leans forward to lean on the island.

“I don’t think we’ll find anymore answers if we do find the others, Sora. The battle was won eventually, Xehanort seems to be gone, and all of that is behind us now. Just, be aware of that.”

“I’m not expecting answers, I just want to see our friends again.” Sora nods resolutely, and looks back up at Riku. “When can we leave?”

Riku moves back for his cup before returning to the island, resting on his elbows with the cup hovering at his lips. There is an amused smile on his lips, one that the cup does not hide well.

“I think we should wait a while for now. I’m expecting someone, over the next few weeks.”

* * *

Kairi arrives at the island for the third time in this lifetime, an oddity to be sure as the years have gone on. Something has spurred within her, blown the leaves around on the empty street of her heart until she could do nothing but follow its direction like a child running after a tumbleweed.

The first thing she notices is that the grave has been cleaned. That is not unusual in and of itself. When she had first come here at fifteen, it had been cleaned at least six months prior, and she had deposited her flowers in a pretty spotted vase. The second time, nearly a decade later, it had not been cleaned at all, and she had left fresh flowers in the fading vase with the knowledge that she had likely missed Riku _again_. And now this, the third time, mere months after the second visit, and the flowers are fairly fresh.

It has been their lot since the first time they came back that they were to always miss each other, with the only way to know of the other’s continued existence consisting of the cleanliness of Sora’s grave. They can leave no note for the other, knowing the danger that could lurk on the horizon, even though the darkness has been kept at bay for far longer than she could realistically guess.

Kairi finds comfort in the knowledge that he is out there at least, existing within the same time frame as her for the first time in many years. In the last life, it was only her who kept it clean in thirty years.

She kneels in the sand, uncaring of the feel of the dirt and the stones on her knees. She has grown up hardier in this life, in a Radiant Garden that is much bigger and more metropolitan than it used to be. Her fingers trail down the weathered stone, rough under her fingertips, before they graze across the ground where she roughly thinks Sora’s remains might be, if they’re still there at all.

After a moment of silent remembrance for Sora, she reaches out for the vase, intending to remove Riku’s flowers and find a way to squeeze her own in there with his. There’s a muffled clattering as removes the flowers, and Kairi frowns as she shakes the vase gently.

Her eyes widen: the sound is distinctive, of metal clattering against the ceramic. She promptly tips the vase upside down, her hand below the opening, and into her palm falls a curious little circular keyring. It’s a clue, a brazen clue that could put Riku in danger, and she reminds herself to tell him off for it once she deciphers it.

She has no need to try and decipher it, however. It’s all metal, likely placed in there so that it could rust within a few years if not received by her in time. It is only small and obviously cheaply made for tourists, but Kairi’s heart leaps nonetheless. There’s a grand bridge engraved on the metal disc, seemingly huge with the vague etching of a city in the background.

Around it, engraved in clear gold lettering, is _San Fransokyo_.


End file.
